Learners Getting Stuck Randomly in Courses
Issue: SCORM 2004 v 3 & 4 courses getting stuck on random slides within an online course in our PeopleSoft LMS: next and submit buttons don't work. Strangely, some learners successfully complete the course the first time through; others have to retry multiple times (and progress is NEVER saved when this issue occurs); still others never successfully get through. When/Where: randomly at any time, for any learner, in any browser, in any course (Rise and Storyline) in our LMS (PeopleSoft). Can it be replicated? Yes. Though the issue occurs randomly, I can replicate the exact same issue every time when I manually disconnect my network cable, then reconnect. There's no indication that my connection dropped, but upon reconnect, the course is 'stuck'. The only way to exit it at that point is to close the window or use the browser's back button is the only option to get out--and doing so does NOT save progress, even if progress had been saved previously. What we've tried: clearing cache; multiple browsers; changing player settings (launch in new window and/or using the connectivity alert). Previous research informed us if we use SCORM 2004, our LMS requires either V3 or V4 and the Passed/Failed or Passed/Incomplete options, so we did not re-test those settings. Testing: one of the courses was tested in SCORMCloud and Reach 360 successfully--it never got permanently stuck in either LMS upon disconnect/reconnect. Also tested a sample SCORM 2004 V3 course from another vendor in our PeopleSoft LMS--that course was successful, never getting permanently stuck in the course. Question: is there a setting I'm missing? Do we need to alter our js files? I'm planning to compare the published output from the sample SCORM course from the other vendor to our published output files, but there are a LOT of files to look at. Does anyone have tips on what files to focus on? js? xsd? xml? Or ideas on what else to check?Course completing in client's LMS in the first five slides
Hello All, We have multiple courses that we have completed for a client where it is completing early in their LMS, in the first five slides. The client uses SCORM 1.2 and the courses were initially set to complete at 100% of slides viewed. We have made the following changes to try to resolve this issue: Added a manual course complete trigger to timeline start of last slide and changed the tracking to Using triggers to complete course. Changed version number in Reporting and Tracking Options. Changed Identifier information in Reporting and Tracking Options. Published out a brand new sample project with the tracking set to when the learner has view 100% of slides to eliminate any other variables that may be slipped in during development. This resulted in the same early completion. We are unable to recreate this issue in SCORM Cloud. All courses test and, based on the debugger, send a complete status on the final slide. We are in the process of reaching out to the client's LMS support for troubleshooting, but in the meantime, I was wondering if anyone has come across this issue before.Storyline 360: Publishing a Course for LMS/LRS Distribution
If you’re using a learning management system (LMS), a learning record store (LRS), or both to distribute and track e-learning content, you’ll want to use the LMS/LRS publishing option in Storyline 360. Here’s how. Enter Title, Description, and Folder Location Enter Additional Project Info (Optional) Adjust the Player Properties and Quality Settings Choose to Publish a Slide, a Scene, or the Entire Course Choose Reporting and Tracking Options Publish Distribute Your Published Course Step 1: Enter Title, Description, and Folder Location Go to the Home tab on the ribbon and click Publish. When the Publish window appears, select the LMS / LRStab on the left. Enter the Title the way you want it to appear in your published output. (If you have a title placeholder on the first slide, the title defaults to the text entered in that title placeholder. If you don’t have a title placeholder on the first slide, the title defaults to the name of your project file. You can change the title of your published course here without affecting the name of your project file or the title placeholder on the first slide.) The maximum length for a project title is 80 characters; the maximum length for each output folder name is eight words. Use the Description field to define the purpose of your course. It won’t appear in your published output. Use the Folder field to choose where you want to publish your course—for example, your computer desktop. Click the ellipsis button (...) to browse to a location. Storyline 360 will create a new folder in that spot with all the files needed to operate your course. Tips: Always publish to your local hard drive. Publishing to a network drive or a USB drive can cause problems with your published output. After publishing to your local hard drive, upload the output to your LMS, LRS, or both for testing and distribution. Install the November 2021 update or later for Storyline 360 to send results to an LRS. Learn more. Step 2: Enter Additional Project Info (Optional) Click the ellipsis button (...) next to the Title field todefine additional project information. Currently, this information is for your reference only. It won’t be visible in your published output. The Title and Description fields are the same as those on the Publish window (see the previous step). The image below the Title fieldisthe course thumbnail. By default, Storyline 360 uses an image of the first slide in your course, but you can choose a different image. Just click the hyperlinked text below the image, then select a different slide or clickPicture from Fileto choose an image on your hard drive. You can enter values for the Author, Email, Website, Duration, Date, Version, and Keywords (separated by commas) fields. The Identifier is a unique string of characters assigned by Storyline 360 that your LMS/LRS uses to identify your course. If you’re republishing a course that’s already in your LMS/LRS, don’t change the value in this field. When you’re finished customizing the project information, click OKto return to the Publish window. Step 3: Adjust the Player Properties and Quality Settings Use the Properties section of the Publish window to make last-minute changes to your course player and quality settings. The Player property shows the name of the player currently assigned to your project. (The player is the frame around your slide content.) To make adjustments to your player, click the player name to open theplayer editor. The Quality property lets you choose adaptive or static video quality and control the compression settings for audio clips, static videos, and JPG images. The quality settings default to whatever you used the last time you published a course. To change them, click the Quality property, make your adjustments, and click OK. There are now two video quality options. Select Adaptive to automatically adjust the video quality (high, medium, or low) to the learner’s internet speed and prevent buffering. Learn more. Choose Static to deliver videos with the same quality to all learners, which could cause buffering. Drag the Static slider to change the video compression. Note that higher values give you higher-quality output but also larger file sizes (which means longer download times for learners with slow connections). Lower values give you smaller file sizes and faster download times, but the quality will be lower as well. Drag the Audio Quality slider to adjust the compression settings Storyline 360 uses for audio. Mark the Optimize audio volume box to normalize audio throughout your course for consistent volume across all slides. Tip: If your course audio already has consistent volume, you can speed up the publishing process by unchecking this option. Drag the JPG Quality slider to adjust the compression settings Storyline 360 uses for JPG images. Click Reset to standard optimization to use the default settings: adaptive video quality, audio bitrate of 56 kbps, and JPG image quality of 100%. Step 4: Choose to Publish a Slide, a Scene, or the Entire Course By default, Storyline 360 will publish your entire course. However, you can now choose to publish a specific scene from your course or even just a single slide. This is helpful when you want to publish multiple courses from the same project file. Just click the Publish property, then choose the entire project, a single scene, or a single slide. Step 5: Choose Reporting and Tracking Options Click the Reporting and Tracking button to open the following window, where you can choose how your LMS/LRS reports and tracks learners’ progress. Click the LMS tab in the upper left corner, then choose a standard from the Report to an LMS drop-down. Ask your LMS administrator if you’re not sure which standard to use. Storyline 360 supports cmi5, xAPI (Tin Can API), SCORM 2004, SCORM 1.2, and AICC. Complete the fields in the LMS Course Information section with these tips in mind: The course Identifier is a unique string of characters assigned by Storyline 360 that your LMS/LRS uses to identify your course. If you’re republishing a course that’s already in your LMS/LRS, don’t change the value in this field. If you choose xAPI and need to change this value, avoid special characters and spaces. For SCORM, the LMS Lesson SCORM Information section displays in addition to the LMS Course Information section. The values in the Title and Identifier fields default to the course title. If you have a title placeholder on the first slide, the Title and Identifier fields default to the text entered in that title placeholder instead. This Identifier appears in the imsmanifest.xml file for your course. The file uses a digestible name for the course Identifier, the unique string of characters assigned by Storyline 360. If you’re republishing a course that’s already in your LMS/LRS, don’t change the values in these fields. For xAPI, the following fields display: Activity ID: Your LMS and LRS use this value to identify activities in a course. The unique string of characters in the reference is the same as the value for the course’s Identifier (see above). If you need to change this value, use a valid URN (Uniform Resource Name), then upload the published course to your LMS/LRS for proper testing. Launch URL: If you plan to host the content on a server that’s separate from your LMS, you must enter the full URL for the story.html file. Language Code: This field isn’t mandatory, but you can enter a supported language code to change the language of the tincan.xml file. If you’re unsure, leave this field blank to set the language value in the tincan.xml file to und (undetermined). For SCORM and AICC content, choose your LMS Reporting option. This is the wording you want your LMS to display for learners’ statuses in reports. (This option isn’t available or necessary for cmi5 or xAPI content.) If you plan on reporting to an LRS as well, click the LRS tab on the left side of the window. Mark the box to Report to an external LRS, then choose one of the following options in the section called LRS Configuration. Learn more about LRS support. Supplied at launch: Select this option when you don’t want to store authentication credentials in your Storyline 360 project file or when you need the option to update the LRS endpoint or credentials without republishing the project. Learn more about supplying credentials at launch. Manual: Select this option to enter the LRS endpoint and credentials right in Storyline 360. The configuration details will be stored in your project file, and you’ll need to republish the project if you change them later. Learn more about the manual option. Click the Tracking tab on the left side of the window and chooseany combination of the following options.You can choose one, two, or even all three tracking options. Whichever option a learner completes first is the one that gets reported to your LMS/LRS.Learn more about tracking multiple completion criteria. When the learner has viewed# slides: Mark this option to trigger course completion when learners view acertain number of slides. You can choose a percentage or a fixed number. Then decide which slides get counted—all slides or just those with slide numbers.Learn more about tracking slides viewed. When the learner completes a quiz: Mark this option to track learners based on their quiz results. You can let Storyline 360 keep track of multiple quizzes and send results to your LMS/LRS for the first quiz each learner completes.Learn more about tracking quizzes. (This option will be grayed-out if your course doesn’t have any result slides.) Using triggers: Mark this option to track learners based oncourse completion triggers you added to your course. (This option is grayed-out if your course doesn’t have any completion triggers.) Click OK to save your changes. Step 6: Publish When you’re finished making selections, click the Publish button. When the publishing process is complete, you’ll see the Publish Successful window with several follow-up options. View Project This launches the published course in your default web browser. However, it’s best to upload the published course to your LMS/LRS for proper testing. Email This opens a new email message with a zipped file of your published course attached. This option is helpful if you need to send your course to an LMS/LRS administrator for deployment. FTP This opens a window where you can enter your FTP credentials and transfer your output to a server. Zip This creates a zipped version of your course files in the same location where your course was published. This is the most common choice when you publish for LMS/LRS. Upload the zipped course to your LMS/LRS. Open This opens a file viewer where you can see the files Storyline 360 just created. There will be multiple files and folders for a published course. Tip:If your LMS requires you to identify the file that launches your course, point to index_lms.html . Step 7: Distribute Your Published Course Now that you’ve published your course, it’s time to upload it to your LMS/LRS. The steps for this are different for each LMS/LRS. Contact your LMS/LRS administrator if you need help uploading, launching, or tracking content.Choosing the Right Publishing Option for Your Storyline 360 Project
As you’re putting the finishing touches on your first Storyline 360 course and getting ready to hit Publish, you might be wondering: which publishing option should I choose? Great question! The answer can vary based on where you’re at in the course creation process and how you plan to give learners access to your course. In this article, we’ll take a look at all the possibilities and how to decide which one to choose. Review 360 This publishing option will upload your course to Review 360, the handy web-based review app that’s included in your Articulate 360 subscription. Choose this option when you want to share your course with your stakeholders to get their feedback and approval. Head on over to the tutorial to walk through how to publish to Review 360 step by step: Publishing a Course to Review 360. If you’ve never used Review 360 before, definitely give it a whirl! It makes the whole review process run so much more smoothly. You can learn even more about Review 360 and how it saves you time and hassle in these articles: 3 Ways Review 360 Is a Big Gift for Course Developers. 4 Time-Saving Ways to Use Review 360 Web If you’d like your learners to access your course via your company’s intranet or a website and you don’t need to keep track of their progress or record a quiz score, this is the option for you. If you do need to track learner progress or results, check out the LMS/LRS publish option below. For more details on publishing your course for the web, check out our tutorial Publishing a Course for Web Distribution. And once you’ve published a web version of your course, learn more about uploading it to your website: How to Share an E-Learning Course on Your Intranet or Internet Website. Wondering about mobile? Don’t worry! Our web output works on mobile devices automatically. Learn more here: Publishing a Course for Mobile Devices. Video If you want to upload your project to a video hosting site like YouTube or embed it in a Rise 360 course as a video, this is the publishing option you’ll want to choose. This option can be super useful if you’ve used Storyline 360’s animation features to create a short explainer or a course teaser to entice your learners, for example. When you choose to publish your project as a video, you’ll end up with an .MP4 file that you can upload anywhere that file type is supported. But keep in mind that the .MP4 format doesn’t support interactivity, so you’ll want to design your project accordingly. Check out this step-by-step tutorial for more information: Publishing a Course to a Video File. LMS/LRS If you’re using a learning management system (LMS) to deliver and track your courses, this is the publishing option you’ll want to choose. It’ll allow you to create a SCORM, AICC, API, or CMI5 package that you can then upload to your LMS. It also gives you the option to track your courses with alearning record store (LRS)—perfect for when you have xAPI-enabled learning experiences. Check out this article for all the publishing details: Publishing a Course for LMS/LRS Distribution. And, of course, our LMS/LRS output also works on mobile devices automatically. Find out more here: Publishing a Course for Mobile Devices. Word If you need a printable version of your course—to distribute as a handout or provide a transcript for accessibility purposes, for example—this is the option for you. In the past, some people used this option to share content with reviewers, but now that we’ve got Review 360, we hope that’s a thing of the past! If it’s still your present, you might want to read this article: Still Publishing to Word for Your SME Reviews? Here’s How & Why to Transition to Review 360. And for more information about publishing to Word, head on over to the tutorial Publishing a Course to Microsoft Word. Wrap-Up Hopefully this article has helped you identify the publishing options that make the most sense for your Storyline 360 project. Still have questions? Please share them in the comments below. And be sure to follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.
